Melting

So, Romario is the other guy that works for Martha. And he works like 7 days a week and never takes off. He takes care of the main barn and basically everything around the farm. And the night before last he asks Martha for the following day off (yesterday). And she gives it to him because he has a relative coming in. But this leaves just me available to take care of ALL the horses without any training in the main barn--I don't really know half of the horses that live in there. There are 13 stalls in the main barn plus my 5 in the small barn. When she told me I just kind of looked at her with these wide eyes and she looked back at me with a similar expression. And then she tried to give me a rundown of who the horses were and what they got fed 'so and so is the only horse from the barn that goes in this field, this horse wears a cribbing collar..' etc. So, she goes back upstairs and I'm sitting on the bed thinking about what a disaster this is going to be. It would be different if all the horses were in their stalls in the morning with their little nameplates and I could say, "Hello, you must be Jackson, let's put you in the gelding field." But, no. The horses are all out in their fields. And, for example, Jackson is a bay gelding who goes in, I think, stall 8, and lives in the back gelding field. But there are about 4 other bay geldings in that field. Which one is Jackson?? About 10 minutes later Martha comes back down the stairs and says, "Maybe we should draw a map." Good plan.

So, upstairs I went. Got my piece of paper and my pen. Drew out the barn. Numbered the stalls. Martha rattled off the names of the horses in each stall along with a brief description and the field they were in. (i.e. Bay gelding with cribbing collar, bay filly who is biiig for a 3 year old, bay gelding, at dark bay gelding who is just darn good looking). And then we wrote down what each of the horses gets fed. It was agreed, the next day was going to be a looong one. Then we talked a little more about shows this summer and decided to not go to the Flying Cross mini trial. She's taking Denira to Gemwood in Fairborn, OH that weekend and said it would be a good one to go to instead. So, now we'll be off to Gemwood!

I woke up an extra hour early to have time to do both of the barns in the morning. Things went pretty smoothly, I was surprised. I had my little map tucked in the waistband of my pants and I consulted it frequently. The feeding went pretty smoothly. When I passed Martha on my way back down to the small barn she asked how it went and I said pretty well, but she needed to check and make sure I got the right horses, that I was about 90% certain it was Joey in Joey's stall (the dark bay darn good looking gelding) and only about 80% certain that it was really Jackson in Jackson's stall. Romario wasn't there to take the tractor over the jump arena and smooth it over so I got to replace all the footing in front of the jumps the old fashioned way! With the rake! And it's really not bad. Every time I think 'ughh' I stop and think about what kick ass arms I'm getting and then I'm like 'yes! more raking!'

I had a dressage lesson yesterday, too. It went decently. We started working on leg yielding, since it will help with getting his hind end stretching up under him. We decided our leg yields were decent. He would move really well off my leg but his outside shoulder would fall big time in the direction we were going. Our very last pass I finally figured it out and we had some really great strides in there. We worked on coming down the centerline, too.

I was worn out. Came back to the basement, took a little nap. And woke up to feed the big barn again and turn horses out and do the stalls. I was like a walking zombie by the end. Usually, picking the stalls in the big barn involves pulling the tractor into the aisle with the manure spreader attached. But we weren't about to attempt that. So we just used muck buckets and then lugged them around to the back of the barn and heaved them into the manure spreader when they got full. Work out. I also got the "Stall Picking 101" lesson from Martha. I'm not very good at "making the bed."

Man.